Donald Winnicott and his personal analysis
Donald Winnicott was born on April 7, 1896 in Plymouth, Devon County City. He was a pediatrician, psychiatrist and English psychoanalyst. His were John Frederick Winnicott and Elizabeth Woods he also had two sisters Violet and Kathleen .
Winnicott, had a childhood influenced by many female figures that were her mother, her sisters, her child allie, among other women, that is why they guide the formation of their personality, for that reason we can say that he was inclined to talk more about Mothers in their theories he presents . Due to his upbringing with many women in his environment, Winnicott made him feel safe and protected. Donald Winnicott talks about them as their multiple mothers. That female environment seems to have marked him in his psychological development resulting The demands and needs of children. This is constantly seen in his clinic as a pediatrician and psychoanalyst, an essential contribution that makes psychoanalysis comes from those first links with female caregivers, since he had an endearing relationship with his nanny (he lasted more than 50 years).
During his childhood he had a favorite toy that was a doll named Lily that had previously belonged to his sister Kathleen. His sisters had another call Rose, one day Winnicott hit Rose’s nose with a stick, his father managed to fix the wrist, with it his father taught him that it can be aggressive and others can survive it, this fact may have influenced In his works about aggression without destructiveness.
At 18 he began his medicine career at the University of Cambridge, where he studied biology, enjoyed the reading of Darwin’s writings and it is in them that the influence of this evolutionist is in the importance he gives to the environment , but his studies were interrupted by the arrival of World War I. During that time he was a surgeon in an English ship and could complete his studies in 1920 in London, they were in those years that he begins his interests with Freud’s works in particular his work "Interpretation of dreams" are the works are the works Freud and other English psychoanalysts Pfister changed his course of becoming a rural doctor to be attracted to psychoanalysis, this is revealed in a letter to his sister Violet who reveals his new attraction. From that moment he develops novel concepts in children’s psychoanalysis and inaugurates the concept of play as a founding space of the psychoanalytic cure. He knew that to achieve his training for psychoanalysis he had to install a medical office, he chose to specialize in pediatrics .
As Donald Winnicott’s main reference in his psychoanalytic formation, it was Ernest Jones who guides him, he expresses himself in this way for Jones "Dr. Jones seemed to know more, about my illness than myself", on recommendations of Jones, Donal Winnicott He embarked on a personal analysis with J. Strachey in 1924 and lasted approximately 10 years. In 1927 he entered the British psychoanalytic society, years later he is the first children’s analyst in the United Kingdom. It is Strachey who suggested that he contacted M. Klein, Winnicott says, "I was not a great man, but it will always be my favorite example of a psychoanalyst".
Winnicott was linked to M’s work. Klein after Alix Starchey made a translation of child psychoanalyst in 1932. Klein proposed the children’s relationship with the mother’s chest. These ideas helped him increase his understanding about the child’s most primitive terrors and concerns. Winnicott preferred to use Kleinian theories to discover certain pre-edipic anxieties much more primitive than fear of castration, announced by Freud. Thus it was that he verified maternal and terrifying anxieties to drop, to the chaotic abyss to the child while breastfeeding, experienceing disintegration, unthinkable anxieties and terror to collapse, his thinking of him is biased by the theories of Darwin, Freud and M. Klein. From Darwin and his theory of natural selection linked to survival in a hostile environment, he announces that the baby cannot only adapt to the environment, needing an "facilitating environment" provided by the mother. Regarding Freud, he recognizes and admires his ideas, but does not emphasize the figure of the father, but Winnicott proposes it as the support of the mother Otector of the Mother-Bebé dyad and supplier of a space so that the mother can develop her task. The Oedipus complex, on the other hand, is not enough to explain the difficulties of emotional development of childhood. He also questions the Freudian and Kleinian formulations about the death instinct.
Donad Winnicot and Klein treated the pre -oedipal aspects of the child’s personality. Winnicott highlights the importance of the child’s real relationship and his mother. Klein highlighted the aspects of envy, aggressiveness, voracious and psychotic experiences, while Winnicott always highlights healthy aspects, the ability to recognize each other, the desire to be loved. It also takes the role of the game and the use of toys as a means to enter the children’s world, the persecutory of internal objects, primitive defenses and reactive depression. However, by resuming the concept of repair, she turns him over and talks about concern for the other and the possibility of contributing something to the sustained relationship in the confidence in the environment. This produces an attitude of affective maturity that makes it possible. Winnicott, in addition, makes its own and very novel development of its game theory.
From the beginning m. Klein studied the world of unconscious fantasies of children (internal world). DW undoubtedly recognized the value of these ideas, but chose to study how the external world of the family environment facilitated or inhibited the maturative development of children. The first Klenians felt very threatened by the alleged diversion of attention to the external world.
After the analysis with Stachey continues with Joan Riviere. His equidistant positions with Klein and Anna Freud, place him as the most important leader of the intermediate group of British psychoanalytic society, becoming president for two periods 1965-1968. Winnicott died in 1971 because of cardiac arrest.
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